Rabbi David Teutsch responded to my comments comparing his Guide to Jewish Practice with the Conservative work The Observant Life with some criticisms of his own. I thank David for writing back, and invite him – and others – to continue the conversation.
I’d like to respond to David’s observation with 3 points.
First, David affirmed that his work is not lacking in clear stands, pointing especially to the sections on business and speech ethics. I agree about business ethics, which is among the most Jewish-textually rich portions of book. I’ll apply to this section what I said in my original post regarding the Tzedaka section: it does a stronger job of locating ethical principles in specific norms. I thought the speech ethics section is very edifying, but I think it generally instantiates my main point – again, as an observation of our different paths, not a condemnation of the more liberal path – that Teutsch’s work focuses on broad general values we all share (“Tzelem Elohim,” “God’s seal is truth”) rather than on tightly examining the behaviors which the Jewish normative tradition has applied. I would think Teutsch would wear that mantle happily, since it is what he more or less said about himself. I didn’t say the Reconstructionist book never takes clear stances. I said that this work is mainly a conversation among contemporary liberal rabbis and the Jews who love them about how to apply our values, but too rarely – given my interpretation of Jewish tradition – an ongoing conversation with the normative tradition about specific problems and specific norms. And it is in those areas, about particularly Jewish behaviors, that this work remains less specific.
Second, Teutsch reminds me that “ordering” Jews to follow Halakha won’t work. Ordering? Who said anything about ordering? This language is an almost Pavlovian reflex among liberal Jews. When someone mentions Halakha, liberals accuse them of trying to “order” Jews around or bully them into obedience, as if the only reason anyone would follow Jewish law is that they were coerced to do so. What if they do so as acts of devotion? I and my fellow Observant Life authors attempt to reveal the meaning, beauty and wisdom of the normative tradition. As Franz Rosenzweig wrote in the great essay “the Builders,” people love the law because of its inner power, “the law of everyday and of the day of death, petty yet sublime, sober yet woven in legend; the law that knows both the fire of the Shabbat candle and that of the martyr’s stake. [p. 77 ]” For moderns, the law thrives not primarily because of authoritarian claims, because God or the Shulhan Arukh said so, but rather because its wise spiritual discipline is authoritative, enduring and powerful. It is, as FR said, because “the voice of the commandment causes the spark to leap from ‘I must’ to ‘I can’ [p. 86].” I strongly think that this implied accusation that Conservative Judaism “orders” people to behave is misplaced. I would do nothing but persuade. But the authors of these 2 respective works clearly differ on what sorts of behaviors they would persuade about.
Finally, David implies that that my position on traditional Jewish sexual norms depends on a combination of ignorance of the messy historical reality and “wishful” thinking about a pious past. First, of all, I hope I am guilty of neither transgression. But even if I were, I’m not sure this would undermine my position. I thank David for directing me to Yom Tov Assis’ research on sexual behaviors in medieval Iberia. But what should this contribute to our conversation? I think we’re having a conversation about Jewish norms, the behavior that realizes our values in deeds. That is, by definition, a prescriptive account. Let us grant that 700 years ago, medieval Spanish reality included all kinds of ugly things, like adultery, prostitution, the exploitation of household maids, and the unhappy coexistence of “sister wives.” (All of which, as Assis notes, were condemned by Jewish society’s moral leaders.) Why should we bring these exploitative realities into today’s Jewish virtue-conversation? Like all history, these are descriptive accounts.
But one cannot derive prescriptive norms from social descriptions. You cannot make an ought out of an is. You can only make an ought out of an ought: an argument for which virtues constitute the good life. My argument does not depend on a sanitized or romantic view of sainted ancestors. In fact, no one who studies Halakhic literature could ever think that it is a record of perfect piety. There would be no responsa literature at all if everyone always did what rabbinic authority would have wanted.
I can only repeat what I think should be an uncontroversial – virtually self-evident – tenet of Jewish sexual ethics: monogamous fidelity is the ideal and extra-marital sex is forbidden for both husbands and wives. This position doesn’t depend on whether all Jewish societies attained these virtues, or even whether they all accepted them as virtues. That is an interesting question of academic interest. But the fact that medieval Spanish Jews kept concubines does not undermine my moral claim. Nor is my position vitiated by the existence of bad marriages today. I remain certain that rabbis should teach in accordance with the overwhelming consensus of the Jewish prescriptive tradition: the virtuous life is found in monogamy and fidelity, not polyamory.
- Nedarim, Daf 79 - January 12, 2023
- Nedarim, Daf 78 - January 11, 2023
- Nedarim, Daf 77 - January 10, 2023